WHO & Interpeace partnership in DRC

Initiatives

Context

L' World Health Organization (WHO) works with 194 Member States, across six regions of the world and has over 150 offices committed to achieve better health for everyone. WHO has strived to combat diseases around the world, supporting countries as they coordinate efforts of governments and partners to attain health objectives and support national health policies and strategies.

On 1 August 2018, the Ministry of Health of the Democratic Republic of the Congo notified WHO of a new outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in North Kivu Province, in the eastern part of the country.



Partnerships

The response team coordinated by WHO has had a hard time getting the wider community to embrace the philosophy of the response. This climate of mistrust has posed a risk of contamination of the disease throughout the Great Lakes Region and around the world.

Interpeace partnered with WHO to help build trust between members of the communities and the Ebola response team. The project initiated with a participatory action research to understand the reasons for this mistrust.



Fostering trust between the population and Ebola response team

In the Beni and Butembo Territories of North Kivu, Interpeace launched a project to help restore trust between Ebola response workers and members of the community. Beni and Butembo have borne the brunt of the DRC’s ongoing Ebola epidemic, and response teams coordinated by the national authorities and the World Health Organization (WHO) have experienced mistrust from the local communities, undermining Ebola response efforts. Interpeace undertook a participatory action research (PAR) effort to understand the underlying reasons for this mistrust and successfully gained the interest of the national government, which expressed interest in working more closely with Interpeace on the Ebola programme, particularly to strengthen trust between the population and the Ebola workers.

Ressources